Broken Photographs
by RoswlFreak03
Summary: Vaughn goes to see Sydney 10 years after she leaves L.A
1. Default Chapter

Title: Broken Photographs  
  
Author: Caro  
  
Rating: PG  
  
Category: Syd/Vaughn angst-galore!  
  
Dedication: This one goes out to all of my Guardian Angel pals!  
  
Disclaimer: Yeah, I wish I owned Alias, however, I assure you they are not mine and never will be, sadly.  
  
Vaughn walked languidly down a street with both tension and excitement building in him. He saw that the street name marked Maple Avenue matched the street name on the sheet of paper he had printed out months earlier. Countless times he had contemplated his current actions in his chair, in his stuffy CIA office. He wondered what she looked liked, if her hair was short, or long. If she had a tan, or was still had that ivory color of skin. In his mind, she never changed, she would always be the girl who stole his heart from the very first time he saw her walk into the CIA conference room to write her statement. Her fiery red hair had matched her perseverance and she always amazed him with her ability to completely captivate him.  
  
Briefly looking up at the stars, Michael Vaughn noted how they seemed to be twinkling at him, yet he could not decide whether they were laughing at him for living in a dream world or if they were pushing him towards her doorstep. He enjoyed the crispness of the New England summer air, it was so unlike the smoggy Los Angeles air, which made everybody feel as if they were trapped inside of a heated box with no air holes.  
  
Vaughn took a crinkled photograph out of his pocket and sighed as he remembered Sydney's good-bye party that the CIA had thrown her. After all the SD branches had been brought down, Sydney stayed true to her word that she wanted no part of the spy business. She proclaimed how she needed to find herself in a world without the constant reminders of all the darkness that she had encountered on his missions. The picture was of Vaughn and Sydney laughing with Vaughn's arm gently draped across Sydney's shoulder and Sydney looking at Vaughn right in the eyes. There were pieces of cake on a table next to them. Vaughn had just made a joke about Weiss's luck, or lack there of, with women. Vaughn's luck however turned out for the better that night.  
  
Since Francie's marriage to Bill, an old childhood friend who had resurfaced, Sydney had their old place all to herself. Vaughn drove her back to her house, not yet ready to let the love of his life walk out of the CIA doors never to see her again. He needed more time with her, even if it was only the short distance to where she lived.  
  
"Vaughn…Michael… I can't say goodbye to you, not yet. Do you want to come inside and talk. No CIA talk, missions, no debriefing. Just two friends conversing."  
  
Vaughn parked the car and relished in the fact that he didn't have to look over his shoulder in wonder if SD-6 had followed them. On the brief walking distance from the driveway to the front door, Vaughn grabbed Sydney's hand as their fingers entwined. He was amazed at how utterly perfect the moment felt.  
  
Sydney must have felt it too. Neither of them remembered or cared who made the first move, but within moments their hands were exploring the territories of each other's bodies that their fingers had been yearning touch for so long. Each kiss released the passion built up by the past. Each moan and breath spoke volumes to the other. They spent the night living out each of their mutual desires for each other over the past few years. The next morning, when the sun shown through the window, Sydney snuggled closer to Vaughn. Both knew that the dawning of the new day was beckoning for Sydney to take her boxed up belongings and hit the road.  
  
"Come with me." Sydney pleaded between kisses.  
  
"I can't." Sydney knew that Vaughn felt obligated to stay with the CIA, whether out of devotion to his father's memory, making a difference in the world, or because being a CIA agent was the one true thing that gave his life a purpose.  
  
After Vaughn helped Sydney put all of her luggage into her newly bought SUV, they shared one last hug, embracing the emotions felt throughout their time together. Sydney leaned in to give him one last kiss. He gently smoothed the back of her hair, relishing the silkiness of it. Her eyes once again pleaded with him to come with her. But the look in his eyes told her that he couldn't do it.  
  
"I love you. If you need anything… anything at all, you've got my number." Sydney smiled as she remembered when he said those words in the past. When she was at her lowest point. He was her guardian angel, distance, time, and space couldn't erase that fact.  
  
"I love you too. Goodbye Agent Vaughn." With a light peck on the cheek, she got in her car.  
  
He watched as her car got smaller and smaller in the distance until you could only see the row of houses and the grayness of the street.  
  
Ten years later, an older and wiser version of that man stood outside a house that matched the description of the directions to her house that he had printed out from his computer.  
  
As he was about to take a step to cross the street and ring the doorbell, he saw the kitchen light turn on. A women with medium length brown hair carried a child in her arms and sat her down on the countertop to tend to the wound that the child had gotten on her knee. Vaughn smiled as he saw how Sydney hadn't changed much at all. She still looked as beautiful as she did in his memory.  
  
A man soon followed into the kitchen as he placed a soft kiss atop the child's head and then bent down to kiss her knee. The child giggled after Sydney placed the bandage on the wounded area, and then jumped off the counter and playfully ran into another room. He watched as the man slid his arm around Sydney's small waist and proceeded to kiss her.  
  
It was then when Sydney had her arms wrapped around the gentleman's neck that Vaughn saw the sparkling of a diamond ring on her finger. His heart broke into a million pieces as all of his hopes came crashing to the ground. Although he prepped himself on his flight to New England that she might be married and might have children, his heart still hopes for a chance to rekindle what they had shared all that time ago. That he would ring the doorbell and Sydney would hug him, and tell him that she had been waiting for him. That she was always waiting for him and there was no other guy for her but him.  
  
He was happy though. She had found someone to love and live her life with. After all that she had gone through during her life in L.A, he couldn't help but feel proud of her. Proud that she made it through the darkness and had found the happiness that life can offer. He knew that she was happy, and he was content knowing that.  
  
The photograph of the two of them at Sydney's goodbye party slowly slipped through his fingers and fell to the ground as Vaughn suddenly realized he didn't belong here anymore. He didn't have a place in Sydney's life.  
  
Sydney stopped kissing her husband when she felt a strange feeling come over her. She looked out the window only to see the shadow of a man walking away.  
  
She walked outside, her daughter skipping behind her, following. She looked down the street, but only saw the darkness of the shadows that the trees had cast on the street and walkways.  
  
In the distance she heard a car engine start up and the sound of the tires as the vehicle sped away.  
  
"Mommy, it's you!!"  
  
Sydney walked over to where her daughter was standing, on the sidewalk across the street from their house. She took the picture from her daughter's hand. Tears started brimming around her eyes as she quickly wiped them away, so her daughter wouldn't see.  
  
"Mommy, who is the man in the picture with you?"  
  
Sydney hesitated as she saw the curiosity that lay in her daughter's eyes. She had the same blue eyes as her father, and the same dimple in her chin. "Mikeighla, that's your father."  
  
  
  
The End!!  
  
Please, let me know what you think!! 


	2. Epilogue

Ok, I got a lot of amazing feedback from the first part. And I had intended on just leaving it with that cliffhanger. But I decided to write some more due to all of the great responses and also after realizing I had a lot of stuff in the last part that just didn't make much sense… so here's the epilogue ( enjoy  
  
BTW: The way you pronounce the girl's name is Mi-kay-la  
  
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"Mike….Mike! Earth to Mike!" Agent Weiss rapidly wave his hands in front of Vaughn's eyes.  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"Wow, you were about a million miles away. What's been with you lately? Ever since you came back from your vacation last week you've been… I don't know, different."  
  
Vaughn looked at Eric for a few moments. He wanted to tell him that he had acted on his emotions and gone to see Sydney. But he didn't feel like hearing his 'I told you so' from him. "Sorry. I was just thinking about that King's game last night. They really got killed!"  
  
"Right, sure. Fine, keep your little secret to yourself. I just wanted to let you know that you have… a visitor of sorts." A small smile crept up on Weiss's lips, but he repressed it, not wanting to give anything away.  
  
Vaughn put his head back into his work and began typing on his computer. "Tell them to go away. I'm extremely busy with these reports."  
  
"Ok, I'll just tell Sydney that you're too busy to speak with her and to come by the next time she visits." With that he turned around and was about to walk out the door, but Vaughn had lept out of his chair and had beat him to the door, and was down the hallway before Weiss could blink.  
  
Vaughn opened the door to Conference Room 3. Up close he could see that Sydney had aged, marginally. There were a few lines apparent on her face, and she looked a little worn. She was still beautiful to him though.  
  
Sydney marveled at how much Vaughn hadn't changed. His hair, his face, everything just looked the same. Yet somehow she could just tell that he had gotten older, wiser, and he presented himself in a much more mature fashion than she once remembered.  
  
"Hi Vaughn."  
  
"Sydney" His mouth just stopped working after he said her name. It was as if he was paralyzed and couldn't speak.  
  
"I bet you're wondering what I'm doing here." She watched as he nodded his head.  
  
Taking a moment to stop looking at Sydney, Vaughn noticed Sydney's daughter sitting down, drinking a juice box. She had dirty blonde straight hair that came down past her shoulders. It was in a braided with a pink ribbon entwined in it. She stared intently at her juice box, reading it. Somehow however, he could tell that she was listening and processing every word that was being spoken in that room.  
  
"So, I found this on my street. And I wondered how many people would have a picture of us together from all those years ago." She stopped in hopes he would say something. "Vaughn why didn't you call, or let me know you were coming, at least knocked on the door when you got there."  
  
He gulped. She knew he had gone to see her. "I did go to see you. I don't know why I waited so long. But when I got there, I saw you tending to your daughter's injured knee. And then I saw your husband come in there. And I realized what a perfect life you were living. I didn't want to disrupt all that you had built. I figured why disturb something so right. So I left, I didn't even realize I had dropped the photo until I was on the plane home. I'm sorry."  
  
Sydney stifled a laugh. She briefly remember all the times she looked at the few photos she had of Vaughn, and the times she picked up her phone ready to call him and tell him that he had a daughter. And especially her one visit back to L.A. She was about five months pregnant and she wanted to tell Vaughn in person. But when she to his street, she saw him driving back to his place with a girl. She was stupid and should have talked to him anyway, given him a choice whether or not to be apart of his daughter's life. But she chose the cowardly way and kept her daughter all to herself. Fate had played a cruel trick on both of them.  
  
"My husband…" she held up her hand and Vaughn saw that the ring he had seen the previous week was gone. "I have no husband." Sydney saw the look of confusion in his eyes.  
  
Walking over to the door she opened it, knowing that Weiss would be on the other side. And sure enough, there he was. "Eric, can you do me a favor and take Mikeighla to get something to eat, maybe a bag of chips or some cookies."  
  
He smiled at both of them. "Sure thing, let's go sweetie." He said as he held out his hand for the girl.  
  
"It's ok honey." Sydney cooed to her daughter.  
  
"You have no husband… then who was the guy in the kitchen of your house, and where did your ring go?" Vaughn obviously had a lot of questions.  
  
"You saw Bill, he's my now ex-fiancée. After the whole incident with you and stuff, we had a huge, and I mean huge, fight. I've always sort of known that we weren't good together. I don't even know why I dated him as long as I did, never mind accept his engagement proposal. I guess when you get to my age, you start wondering if you're meant to live your life alone. And I didn't want that. So, needless to say, things are over between us. I told him the engagement was off, and it was after that, that I found about his cheating. Yeah, this story is getting to be a sob story. Basically, it's over between him and me."  
  
Vaughn saw the pain in her eyes as she rehashed what had happened between her and Bill. He could tell she didn't want to talk about him. "I'm sorry that I caused that. But do you think it's wise to take your daughter away from her father, for his sake?"  
  
Sydney looked Vaughn straight in the eyes. "She's not his daughter…"  
  
"What are you saying… are you saying that… you're telling me that… she's… she's mine?" He could feel his heart pounding in his chest. He didn't know whether to jump for joy or to try to strangle Sydney right there and then.  
  
"Yeah, she's yours alright. She has your dimple in her chin." Sydney sounded like a little girl saying it. She could tell in that moment that she had made the wrong decision in not telling him.  
  
"She's my daughter, my flesh and blood and you never took a spare moment to call me and possibly let me know?" Vaughn raised his voice in anger.  
  
"I'm sorry! I tried, I thought about is so many times, you have no idea. I wanted to over and over again. I picked up the phone but then I just couldn't do it. I saw you once. A few months after I left, I came back to tell you. And I saw you, and you were happy. I had never seen you laugh so much before as you were laughing with some women you were with. And I know it was stupid and presumptuous of me, but I was pregnant and irrational. You were so happy and I didn't want to burden you with my trouble. I didn't want you to have to change your life because of me." She looked at the ground, unable to see the pain in his eyes.  
  
His voice had turned soft. "You didn't give me a chance. Sydney, you didn't have the right to deny me of her. You didn't give me a choice whether or not I wanted to be apart of your life and her life."  
  
"And what would you have done? Hmm? Would you have retired from your job at the CIA here and moved out to Boston to be with me? Would you have given up your life that you had built here just because of one night?"  
  
"Damn straight I would have. Sydney, I was in love with you! I would have done anything to be with you."  
  
"Then why didn't you?" Tears were now freely streaming down her cheeks. "I asked you to come with me, to be with me. You turned me down. Why? Why didn't you come with me?"  
  
He walked over and wiped her eyes with a Kleenex. "Because I didn't want to burden you. When you told me you were leaving, that you wanted to built a new life for yourself, I wanted you to have that opportunity. For you to start fresh with no ties to the CIA or SD-6. Nothing that reminded you of Danny's death or all the bad things that happened to you. You didn't need me to be a constant reminder of all that."  
  
"But I wanted you there. It broke my heart to leave that day. Since the day I met you, all I wanted was for us to be together. To build a family and live the rest of our lives with each other. When Mikeighla was born, all I saw was you when I looked in her eyes. And somehow that made it easier on me, not being with you."  
  
It took all of Vaughn's strength not to start crying as well. "So what do we do now?" Sydney asked.  
  
"Well there's no way I'm letting you go back to Boston alone." Sydney smiled as she saw the bright smirk appear on his face.  
  
"You mean it? You want to come with us, and be… a family?"  
  
"All my life, I've wanted nothing more."  
  
Vaughn grabbed Sydney's hand and entwined their fingers, and the same feeling of perfection had once again washed over him.  
  
"Come on, I'll introduce you to your daughter."  
  
--The End!!—  
  
Ok, I realized, from reading all of your comments that I did leave a lot of loose ends and a lot of things didn't fit right. So I'm hoping that I made it better and cleared some things up. Thanks so much to all of you who gave me feedback! I'm overwhelmed! Thank you! But please, let me know what you thought of this last part ;) 


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